Post by acethesupervillain on Feb 3, 2020 17:53:51 GMT
Hey, what's up, I feel into a historical weapons rabbit hole the other day, and I wanted to share some findings.
I really love the Pike and Shot era. You get this fun combination of oversized weapons like the Pike and Zweihander, with early firearms like fire lances and hand cannons, and this is the time when gun swords were a real thing. It's especially fun if you're throwing in Middle East and Asian weapons, as they developed a lot more ideas for fire weapons. I feel like it would be a good basis for a fantasy world or an alternate history timeline. A lot of these technologies offer interesting mechanics that would probably need their own rules.
"Bad War" an engraving of pike warfare from the 1500s
The obvious main weapon is the Pike, a really long spear 10 to 25 feet long. They were deployed in formations called Pike Squares and generally operated by pushing into enemy formations without stopping, the "Push of Pike". Pikes were originally anti-cavalry weapons and the prevalence of pikes reduced the effectiveness of cavalry. The traditional mounted Knights, Samurai and similar institutions lost importance or adapted to the new style of combat.
As for rules, I know it's kind of difficult to depict pikes in wargames. I was thinking was that one could resolve it so that pikes always attack first, i.e. a sword unit going into melee with a pike unit would get attacked by the pikes first, then get to do their attack.
Pikes were supposedly vulnerable to close combat, and were protected by other combat units. Initially this was the Halberd, which evolved from being more axe-like to focusing on the top spike and hook for dismounting cavalry. Swiss pike and halberd mercenary formations dominated the battlefields of Europe, until they were met with German imitators called the Landsknecht, who introduced the mighty Zweihander sword. Frontline fighters were known as doppelsoldner "double pay soldiers" who used a maneuver called the Forlorn Hope, where they would rush into enemy pikes with their zweihanders and try to punch through the pikes and disrupt their formation. Because volunteers were rare, Forlorn Hope formations also employed criminals sentenced to death.
In Ming China, they developed a similar formation to European pike fighting, called the "Mandarin Duck Formation". (The Mandarin Duck is a symbol of working together or sticking together, as ducks are typically seen in pairs) Pikes would be stationed in the middle, and defended by sabers, wolf brush and tiger forks. The Ming mainly used this formation to secure its borders against pirates and barbarians.
Pike formations in Europe and China would soon be augmented with the new "arquebus" the precursor to the musket. Spain grew in power by developing the Tercio unit, meaning "thirds", the idea being one third pike, one third halberd and one third arquebus. As the arquebus developed into a more reliable and powerful weapon, the pikes evolved from the main weapon to a defense force for the gunners, and eventually disappeared once reliable bayonets were developed that were able to fill the same niche with a single weapon.
The heyday of the arquebus was in Japan during their Sengoku Jidai. After reverse engineering Portuguese imports, Japan was producing more guns than any other country in the world. Although the samurai of this era would become famous for their katana, the real bulk of warfare was conducted with Pike and Shot, the native yari and naginata approximating the pike and halberd of Europe. Arquebuses were plagued by cumbersome reload time, but they got around this by firing in staggered volleys. Two or three groups of gunners would attack in waves as the others reloaded. This was put to famous use by Oda Nobunaga in the Battle of Nagashino, where humble foot soldiers with guns and wooden barricades were able to gun down the prestigious Takeda cavalry.
What I find fascinating was that Europe, China and Japan didn't interact with each other much during this time, but developed very similar warfare styles basically because they were playing with the same rules of physics.
Pike and Shot warfare was preceded by early gunpowder weapons, and hoo boy, were they a hoot. A lot of these come from the Huolongjing or Fire Dragon Manual compiled in Ming China.
The original gun powder weapons were called Fire Lances, a gunpowder explosive held on a long stick. They were not so much force as fiery explosions, designed to hurt, obviously, but mostly scare the crap out of the enemy and break through their lines in the initial phase of battle. In China, later fire-lances were packed with lead pellets or pottery shards to create a shot-gun like effect, with a range of about 3 meters. Some were also filled with poison or noxious gas. The firelance eventually evolved into the handcannon or gonne, which was closer to what we think of as a gun.
Rockets were also developed in this time. Eventually, rockets would become explosive or incendiary weapons, since you couldn't pack those kinds of payloads into a cannon without an extreme risk of blowing up the cannon itself, but one of the original combat rockets was the humble fire arrow. Since the humble fire arrow was a little too humble, they fixed that by launching tons of them at once, with devices like the arrow basket above or the famous hwacha. (The hwacha is described as a Korean invention, but I'm fairly sure that China had similar devices. The Huolongjing describes a cart that carried multiple fire lances.)
Japan developed a version of the fire arrow called the Bo-hiya, fired from a modified tanegashima called the hiyazutsu (which is literally, "fire arrow tube" although "tube" is also what they called cannons). There's not a whole lot of info about them, but they obviously look like they're meant to do something other than simply pierce like the older fire arrow. Supposedly, Japanese pirates used them to set fire to enemy ships.
I don't have good pictures for these, but there's a thing called the Fierce-Fire Oil Cabinet, which was an ancient Chinese flamethrower. The FFOC was developed waaaay before these other weapons, back in the era between Tang and Song, around the end of the Viking Age in Europe. Handheld bombs and grenade-like weapons were also developed, like the firelances, they were filled with shrapnel or poison rather than relying solely on explosive force. Some weapons were basically like bomb arrows from Zelda, they are also called fire arrows, and I have a hard time telling the difference between rocket fire arrows and bomb fire arrows. Land mines also existed, early on in China and later in Europe, but they were considered unreliable. Ninja also used a lot of these weapons, including rocket and bomb arrows. The classic Ninja smoke bomb is of course a gunpowder device, and they also deployed more grenade-like bombs.
Post-Pike&Shot, the British East India Company were attacked by Mysorean Rockets in India. These iron tubed rockets had much greater range and speed than European rockets (which I guess were wood or ceramic). Some had swords or daggers attached, and were balanced so that they were squirm and thrash, or bounce off the ground, causing massive damage and dismay to closely packed formations. They eventually brought this technology back to England and developed the Congreve Rocket, which was deployed against America in the War of 1812 (also maybe known as the American theatre of the Napoleonic Wars). Ship launched rockets were used to burn down Washington DC, and were referred to in the Star Spangled Banner, our national anthem, "And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there." Like the fire arrows and rocket lances, the congreve rockets delivered incendiary payloads, which were impractical to launch from cannons.
I really love the Pike and Shot era. You get this fun combination of oversized weapons like the Pike and Zweihander, with early firearms like fire lances and hand cannons, and this is the time when gun swords were a real thing. It's especially fun if you're throwing in Middle East and Asian weapons, as they developed a lot more ideas for fire weapons. I feel like it would be a good basis for a fantasy world or an alternate history timeline. A lot of these technologies offer interesting mechanics that would probably need their own rules.
"Bad War" an engraving of pike warfare from the 1500s
The obvious main weapon is the Pike, a really long spear 10 to 25 feet long. They were deployed in formations called Pike Squares and generally operated by pushing into enemy formations without stopping, the "Push of Pike". Pikes were originally anti-cavalry weapons and the prevalence of pikes reduced the effectiveness of cavalry. The traditional mounted Knights, Samurai and similar institutions lost importance or adapted to the new style of combat.
As for rules, I know it's kind of difficult to depict pikes in wargames. I was thinking was that one could resolve it so that pikes always attack first, i.e. a sword unit going into melee with a pike unit would get attacked by the pikes first, then get to do their attack.
Pikes were supposedly vulnerable to close combat, and were protected by other combat units. Initially this was the Halberd, which evolved from being more axe-like to focusing on the top spike and hook for dismounting cavalry. Swiss pike and halberd mercenary formations dominated the battlefields of Europe, until they were met with German imitators called the Landsknecht, who introduced the mighty Zweihander sword. Frontline fighters were known as doppelsoldner "double pay soldiers" who used a maneuver called the Forlorn Hope, where they would rush into enemy pikes with their zweihanders and try to punch through the pikes and disrupt their formation. Because volunteers were rare, Forlorn Hope formations also employed criminals sentenced to death.
In Ming China, they developed a similar formation to European pike fighting, called the "Mandarin Duck Formation". (The Mandarin Duck is a symbol of working together or sticking together, as ducks are typically seen in pairs) Pikes would be stationed in the middle, and defended by sabers, wolf brush and tiger forks. The Ming mainly used this formation to secure its borders against pirates and barbarians.
Pike formations in Europe and China would soon be augmented with the new "arquebus" the precursor to the musket. Spain grew in power by developing the Tercio unit, meaning "thirds", the idea being one third pike, one third halberd and one third arquebus. As the arquebus developed into a more reliable and powerful weapon, the pikes evolved from the main weapon to a defense force for the gunners, and eventually disappeared once reliable bayonets were developed that were able to fill the same niche with a single weapon.
The heyday of the arquebus was in Japan during their Sengoku Jidai. After reverse engineering Portuguese imports, Japan was producing more guns than any other country in the world. Although the samurai of this era would become famous for their katana, the real bulk of warfare was conducted with Pike and Shot, the native yari and naginata approximating the pike and halberd of Europe. Arquebuses were plagued by cumbersome reload time, but they got around this by firing in staggered volleys. Two or three groups of gunners would attack in waves as the others reloaded. This was put to famous use by Oda Nobunaga in the Battle of Nagashino, where humble foot soldiers with guns and wooden barricades were able to gun down the prestigious Takeda cavalry.
What I find fascinating was that Europe, China and Japan didn't interact with each other much during this time, but developed very similar warfare styles basically because they were playing with the same rules of physics.
Pike and Shot warfare was preceded by early gunpowder weapons, and hoo boy, were they a hoot. A lot of these come from the Huolongjing or Fire Dragon Manual compiled in Ming China.
The original gun powder weapons were called Fire Lances, a gunpowder explosive held on a long stick. They were not so much force as fiery explosions, designed to hurt, obviously, but mostly scare the crap out of the enemy and break through their lines in the initial phase of battle. In China, later fire-lances were packed with lead pellets or pottery shards to create a shot-gun like effect, with a range of about 3 meters. Some were also filled with poison or noxious gas. The firelance eventually evolved into the handcannon or gonne, which was closer to what we think of as a gun.
Rockets were also developed in this time. Eventually, rockets would become explosive or incendiary weapons, since you couldn't pack those kinds of payloads into a cannon without an extreme risk of blowing up the cannon itself, but one of the original combat rockets was the humble fire arrow. Since the humble fire arrow was a little too humble, they fixed that by launching tons of them at once, with devices like the arrow basket above or the famous hwacha. (The hwacha is described as a Korean invention, but I'm fairly sure that China had similar devices. The Huolongjing describes a cart that carried multiple fire lances.)
Japan developed a version of the fire arrow called the Bo-hiya, fired from a modified tanegashima called the hiyazutsu (which is literally, "fire arrow tube" although "tube" is also what they called cannons). There's not a whole lot of info about them, but they obviously look like they're meant to do something other than simply pierce like the older fire arrow. Supposedly, Japanese pirates used them to set fire to enemy ships.
I don't have good pictures for these, but there's a thing called the Fierce-Fire Oil Cabinet, which was an ancient Chinese flamethrower. The FFOC was developed waaaay before these other weapons, back in the era between Tang and Song, around the end of the Viking Age in Europe. Handheld bombs and grenade-like weapons were also developed, like the firelances, they were filled with shrapnel or poison rather than relying solely on explosive force. Some weapons were basically like bomb arrows from Zelda, they are also called fire arrows, and I have a hard time telling the difference between rocket fire arrows and bomb fire arrows. Land mines also existed, early on in China and later in Europe, but they were considered unreliable. Ninja also used a lot of these weapons, including rocket and bomb arrows. The classic Ninja smoke bomb is of course a gunpowder device, and they also deployed more grenade-like bombs.
Post-Pike&Shot, the British East India Company were attacked by Mysorean Rockets in India. These iron tubed rockets had much greater range and speed than European rockets (which I guess were wood or ceramic). Some had swords or daggers attached, and were balanced so that they were squirm and thrash, or bounce off the ground, causing massive damage and dismay to closely packed formations. They eventually brought this technology back to England and developed the Congreve Rocket, which was deployed against America in the War of 1812 (also maybe known as the American theatre of the Napoleonic Wars). Ship launched rockets were used to burn down Washington DC, and were referred to in the Star Spangled Banner, our national anthem, "And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there." Like the fire arrows and rocket lances, the congreve rockets delivered incendiary payloads, which were impractical to launch from cannons.
